January 23, 2025 — Gov. Kelly Ayotte said Tuesday the state would not comply with new guidelines that increase the minimum catchable lobster length, calling them “unnecessary and disruptive.”
Maine has also said it would not follow the regulations set out by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which aim to address declines in smaller, young lobster populations. Massachusetts is also affected by the guidelines.
January 22, 2025 — New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte said Tuesday that New Hampshire will not comply with new guidelines that she said would hurt the state’s lobster industry.
In a letter to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, Ayotte said New Hampshire will not adopt new guidelines that increase the minimum size for lobsters caught in the Gulf of Maine.
“Complying with these guidelines could lead to a loss of a third of lobstermen’s catch this year at a time when lobstermen are already facing declining yields,” Ayotte said in the letter. “Moreover, our lobster industry helps drive summer tourism, with visitors flocking from all over to visit New Hampshire’s historic lobster pounds.”
The guidelines would increase the minimum size for catchable lobsters over the next two year
January 17, 2025 — The State of New Hampshire has been notified by the National Marine Fisheries Service of a vacancy for New Hampshire’s obligatory seat on the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC). NEFMC is one of eight regional councils in the United States established by federal regulation in 1976. It is charged with conserving and managing fishery resources from 3 to 200 miles off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
To assist in filling this vacancy, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department’s Marine Fisheries Division will host a candidates’ interview night on Monday, February 10, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. at the Urban Forestry Center in Portsmouth, NH. Potential candidates should be prepared to present their qualifications at this session. Interested candidates should contact Cheri Patterson, Chief of Marine Fisheries for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, at (603) 868-1095 in advance of the meeting.
January 15, 2025 — A new regulation on catchable lobster size could significantly reduce lobster hauls this summer, according to industry members, with local lawmakers expressing concerns about its impact on the Seacoast economy.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), which oversees certain species along the Atlantic coast, is implementing a change that will increase the minimum size for catchable lobsters in states including Maine and New Hampshire over the next two years.
The regulation involves an increase in the size of the gauge used by fishermen to measure lobster length to determine if they can be caught or must be released. The minimum gauge size will rise from 3.25 inches to 3.375 inches by July 1, 2025, as stated by the ASMFC. This size will further increase to 3.5 inches by July 1, 2027.
November 12, 2024 — A coalition of U.S. East Coast states have selected two firms to manage the Offshore Wind Fisheries Compensation Fund, a mitigation program built to compensate commercial and recreation for-hire fishers for revenue lost due to offshore wind developments.
The fund is a collaboration between the governments of 11 East Coast states – Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina – to provide financial compensation for economic loss caused by offshore wind projects along the Atlantic Coast. The states launched a competition earlier this year to select an administrator to run the new fund.
November 6, 2024 — Richmond claims resolution firm BrownGreer PLC and London’s The Carbon Trust have been tapped to design and roll out a regional fisheries mitigation program on the East Coast.
The program is aimed at providing financial compensation to the commercial and recreational for-hire fishing industries related to the impacts of new offshore wind farms.
BrownGreer and The Carbon Trust will work with 11 East Coast states and their respective fishing industry communities on the program. The groups have established a design oversight committee and a for-hire committee to provide advice and guidance from respective parties on the program.
The involved states include Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.
March 20, 2024 — Opening a new frontier in the region’s offshore wind power push, the federal government on Friday finalized its designation of a two million-acre wind energy area off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said the designated Gulf of Maine area would support President Joe Biden’s goals of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030 and 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind energy capacity by 2035.
The area, which ranges from 23 to 92 miles off the coasts of the three states, has the potential to support generation of 32 gigawatts of clean energy, the bureau said. That amount of energy surpasses “current state goals for offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Maine: 10 GW for Massachusetts and 3 GW for Maine,” BOEM said.
August 9, 2023 — Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers recently joined counterparts in 26 other states, including New Hampshire, in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn or clarify a legal precedent that could have major implications for federal regulatory authority.
Nebraska was one of 27 states that joined a July 24 filing to the Supreme Court regarding the deference that should be afforded to federal agencies when interpreting ambiguous or silent language passed by Congress. Known as the Chevron deference, the legal doctrine requires courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretation when regulatory authority is ambiguous.
The joint brief argues that Chevron has been “abused and manipulated,” allowing federal agencies to “run amok,” and contends the court should overrule or at least clarify Chevron when it decides Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (named after Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo), in its next term. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the case.
The case deals with the National Marine Fisheries Service and a regulation that requires fishing companies to have an additional person on fishing boats to track regulatory compliance. Companies must pay the monitor’s salary.
Hilgers, in a July 25 statement, said the U.S. Constitution lays out three branches of government, not four, and leaves legislative power to elected representatives, “not unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.”
“Overturning Chevron is a critical step to restoring the Constitution’s protection against the unaccountable use of power and will help save Nebraskans from an endless number of regulations and burdens,” Hilgers said.
July 27, 2023 — New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella has joined prosecutors from 26 other states in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down or scale back a landmark doctrine that critics say gives federal agencies unchecked powers.
“For decades now, unelected bureaucrats at federal agencies have been using a legal principle known as Chevron deference to operate like a fourth branch of the government,” Formella said.
“We now see courts deferring to federal agencies as they bend the law, grow their size, and expand their power over the everyday lives of Americans.”
The controversy stems from a Supreme Court ruling on a 1981 Environmental Protection Agency regulation in a suit against Chevron by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which claimed the agency’s rule violated the Clean Air Act.
The Supreme Court disagreed, holding the agency’s definition was a “reasonable construction” of the law. The court created a two-pronged test for applying the “Chevron deference” in challenges to federal regulations.
Formella and the other attorneys general have filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of a New Jersey-based company that has challenged a federal agency ruling regarding its fishing activity in New England waters.
Loper Bright Enterprises sued Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo over a National Marine Fisheries Service regulation requiring herring fishing boats to have an extra person on board to monitor compliance with federal rules.
Fishing companies have to pay the monitor’s salary, which can run about $700 a day.
The company argued the federal agency had no authority to force it to pay for the monitor.
July 10, 2023 — If longtime New Hampshire groundfisherman Dave Goethel were an I-told-you-so kind of guy, this would be his moment.
Goethel, a 2004 National Fisherman Highliner, was the plaintiff in a 2015 lawsuit, subsequently joined by Northeast Fishery Sector 13, that opposed NOAA’s requirement that fishing vessels pay upward of $700 per day for at-sea monitors.
The case was dismissed. A federal court said it should have been filed within 30 days of the observer program’s creation, not 30 days after NOAA later decided to charge fishermen.
Goethel’s appeal was dismissed as well.
If the courts got rid of his lawsuit, they couldn’t get rid of Goethel. Now retired, his name is on an amicus (friend of the court) brief in the Supreme Court case of Loper Bright Enterprises, a family-owned herring fishing company that is raising the same issue Goethel raised.
The issue as most of us relate to it is whether the Magnuson-Stevens Act implicitly grants NOAA the authority to compel fishermen to pay observer salaries. The underlying question, however, is how much leeway a federal agency has when implementing laws passed by Congress.